Brand Architect

Consumer Trends for 2010

Trendwatching.com, a great resource for highlighting emerging trends around the world, recently released their “10 Crucial Consumer Trends for 2010” briefing and described the coming year as “it’s going to be another interesting year.” You can read the briefing here. A very brief executive summary of the trends is below:

1) Business as Unusual - Forget the recession: the societal changes that will dominate 2010 were set in motion way before we temporarily stared into the abyss.

2) Urbany - Urban culture is the culture. Extreme urbanization, in 2010, 2011, 2012 and far beyond will lead to more sophisticated and demanding consumers around the world.

3) Real-Time Reviews - Whatever it is you're selling or launching in 2010, it will be reviewed 'en masse', live, 24/7.

4) (F)Luxury - Closely tied to what constitutes status (which is becoming more fragmented), luxury will be whatever consumers want it to be over the next 12 months.

5) Mass Mingling - Online lifestyles are fueling and encouraging 'real world' meet-ups like there's no tomorrow, shattering all cliches and predictions about a desk-bound, virtual, isolated future.

6) Eco-Easy - To really reach some meaningful sustainability goals in 2010, corporations and governments will have to forcefully make it 'easy' for consumers to be more green, by restricting the alternatives.

7) Tracking & Alerting - Tracking and alerting are the new search, and 2010 will see countless new INFOLUST services that will help consumers expand their web of control.

8) Embedded Generosity - Next year, generosity as a trend will adapt to the zeitgeist, leading to more pragmatic and collaborative donation services for consumers. More »

9) Profile Myning - With hundreds of millions of consumers now nurturing some sort of online profile, 2010 will be a good year to introduce some services to help them make the most of it (financially), from intention-based models to digital afterlife services.

10) Maturialism - 2010 will be even more opinionated, risqué, outspoken, if not 'raw' than 2009; you can thank the anything-goes online world for that. Will your brand be as daring?

Photo at top by Alex de Carvalho

Dubai’s Brand Crumbles Further

Dubai’s announcement that it is asking investors to allow its investment arm, Dubai World, to suspend debt repayments for six months is another telling blow to the battered city brand and underscores the essential requirement that brands need to be built on substance and authenticity and not promises and wish lists. Floundering under $59 billion debt the city will also learn the lesson that brand equity, long in the building, is easily lost and difficult to reclaim.

Related posts: Brands Built on Sand

The Recession’s Long-Term Impact

Global research firm Synovate recently released the findings of its global money and finance survey which supported previous observations that the recession had dramatically and possibly permanently altered the spending and saving patterns of people. Some of the findings of the survey which questioned 11,400 people in 16 countries include:

-- An overall 6% of respondents say they have changed their bank in the past six months. This was led by 15% in South Africa, 11% in Spain and 10% in New Zealand.

-- One in twenty respondents has taken money out of retirement accounts, topped by 24% in Denmark.

-- One in ten has closed a credit card account, led by 21% in Brazil, 17% in South Africa and 16% in the United Kingdom.

-- A hefty 22% of all respondents have written or revised their budgets, topped by more than half of South Africans (52%), 43% of Brazilians and 41% in New Zealand.

-- On the lifestyle front, one in five respondents have put off an overseas holiday in the past six months, topped by 37% of New Zealanders, 35% of Russians and 32% of Spaniards.

-- Fifteen percent of respondents say they have postponed, or spent less, purchasing a car. This was topped by 34% of Brazilians.

-- 10% of the total respondents have postponed purchasing a home, led by 22% of Brazilians, 18% of Russians and 16% of New Zealanders.

-- One in four people agreed they were glad the world had an economic crisis as it has helped them realise their priorities; over half (55%) have permanently changed their attitudes to the importance of saving money.

-- 58% say they will do their best to not go back to spending what they used to before the economic downturn, led by 80% of Malaysians and 79% of both Taiwanese and South Africans.

-- Seven in ten do not want their neighbours to know if they have economic challenges, topped by 83% of Brazilians and 80% of both Taiwanese and Hong Kong respondents.

Detroit: Latest City to Sell Itself as Creative

Detroit is the latest city to try position itself as a home for creative people and their business. The effort, called Selling Detroit, and sponsored by Time Inc is in fact a competition between five advertising agencies with offices in Detroit to see who can produce the best campaign. Their work will appear in Fortune magazine and the CNN Money, Fortune and Time websites.

“The whole idea of the contest is that we believe in the renewal of the city,” Mark Ford, president for the news group at Time Inc. in New York, told The New York Times.This is to be accomplished partly by people moving to Detroit with their businesses and creativity, and being there “for the long haul.”

Whilst pitching a city as a creative home isn’t new, at least the campaign is honest with the competition stating “America’s most struggling city needs to attract business and talent.”

Corporate’s Caging of Social Media

Many corporates don’t understand social media as a business tool so they ban its use and explain their actions with phrases like “it is a passing fad”. My favourite cartoonist Tom Fishburne picks up on this in his cartoon above.

In his notes, Tom writes: “Organizations are clearly struggling how to address social media. Many start with the premise of social media as a threat, rather than an opportunity. The emphasis is on limiting liability, often with Draconian command-and-control policies (like the muzzle and cage in this cartoon)….

“It’s time to tear down that wall. It’s time to acknowledge that the command-and-control model no longer works. It’s time to encourage the organization to engage more freely with the outside world.

“If there’s nothing to hide, then the risk should be low for social media tools to enable more transparent conversations. If there is something to hide, then the effort should be placed on cleaning up those skeletons in the closet so that the organization can truly brand itself from the inside out.”

The Commoditization of Luxury

The New York-based Luxury Institute recently released its 2009 State of the Luxury Industry survey and had this to say about the increasing number of offerings labeling themselves as luxury: “It doesn't help matters that potential customers feel the luxury market has become over saturated with offerings: 53 percent of the Luxury Institute poll's wealthy respondents said they believe (there were too many luxury brands). Similar polling at the beginning of this year found 44 percent of respondents saying luxury brands were becoming ‘commodities,’ a dirty word if ever there was one in this sector.”

The Unfortunate Continuation of Silos

Much is being written and spoken about whether digital agencies should lead the strategy and management of advertising campaigns. I feel much of the debate misses the point whilst perpetuating the siloing of digital as distinct from other brand and marketing services.

Digital strategy and digital creativity are not distinct from brand strategy and creativity: digital is part of the overall strategy and creativity. But by isolating digital, even if that isolation is on a pedestal, the industry offers the client a fractured approach to brand positioning and communication.

The correct approach, I believe, is to understand the client’s business, challenges, opportunities and market and develop, at a holistic level, a strategy that embraces all the channels and tools relevant to the client’s needs and those of the intended market. The best brand strategies and campaigns are already doing this.

The entity that should lead is therefore the one that can comprehend and analyze the whole picture and knows what expertise to bring in.The debate should therefore be about identifying and building that holistic leadership ability.

Taking Hopenhagen to Copenhagen

The United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen is very important for all of us living on this blue planet and a multitude of organizations are running campaigns urging governments to do the right thing and take steps to combat climate change. One of those campaigns is Hopenhagen which Ogilvy Earth have created for the United Nations and International Advertiser Association.

“The name itself is not only a play on the name of the city where the talks are taking place, but a jibe at the choices we have in the climate crisis. We can cope with climate change by moving inland and rehoming the polar bears or we can hope that we move towards a more sustainable way of living,” ad industry website CMDglobal.com reported.

Social Networks Within Social Networks

In my brand lectures and writing I have been talking about the concept of smaller social networks forming within existing larger social networks. The thinking behind this is as the digital networks become more mature the number of friends, acquaintances, followers and people we follow becomes so big as to wash away real communication in a torrent of (largely useless) information.

My hypothesis was that people would start creating more and more smaller networks or groupings to extract meaningful information and communication. Twitter’s beta testing of its lists service which allows one to control the flood of information by syphoning relevant tweets into smaller and more manageable lists is a perfect example of smaller and more mature networks.

The Less Nice Mickey Mouse

It takes a courageous brand to change a well-established and iconic character, especially one that one that generates about $5 billion in annual merchandise sales.

That is what Walt Disney are about to do to Mickey Mouse.

Concerned that Mickey Mouse has become more of a corporate symbol than a character for the latest generation of youngsters, Disney is taking the risk of repositioning the mouse as less nice, The New York Times reported.

Not that Mickey Mouse is going to start running amok and killing people but he is going to be cantankerous,cunning and heroic as he guides players through a new video game called Epic Mickey: a first step to test public reaction to the repositioning strategy.

Although risky, Disney had little choice but to do something with the character who has become static and seen sales of his merchandise decline. And we mustn’t forget that the original Mickey Mouse, that debuted in 1928 in “Steamboat Willie”, was an “uninhibited rabble-rouser who got into fistfights and played tricks” on others.

Perhaps the new Mickey Mouse is just going back to his roots.

Luxury Brands Face Multiple Challenges

Luxury Institute, the New York-based ratings and research organization, recently released the findings of their latest research which painted a difficult time for luxury goods as the recession drove away aspirational buyers and affluent buyers became more discerning.

Some of the findings from the Luxury Institute's State of the Luxury Industry 2009 Survey, reported by brandchannel, are:

-- Seventy-seven percent of high-end shoppers "agreed that luxury is less important in today's economy."

-- Fifty-eight percent said they are "spending more on essentials rather than on what they want"; 56 percent said they are "being more practical about spending."

-- The majority of affluent consumers aren't big luxury shoppers. Pre-recession, most of the luxury market's power came from lower-income aspirational buyers.

-- Many affluent consumers said that they're primarily interested in quality and service, which they consider hard to find in luxury goods.

-- The rise of discounting has damaged people’s brand perception.

Vampires Drive Volvos

Constantly in search of a sexier image, Volvo are turning to ever-popular vampires to give them some street credibility. The Swedish car manufacturer has placed their new XC60 in the new vampire movie The Twilight Saga: New Moon.

The car, driven by vampire character Edward Cullen, features prominently in the movie leading to Ogilvy Entertainment to comment “Edward Cullen makes the Volvo XC60 look like a million bucks, similar to the effect that James Bond had on the Aston Martin”. (I don’t know whether Ogilvy were involved with the brand placement).

Besides the brand placement, Volvo have added some transmedia thinking by creating a web and social media presence to promote the car and contest with prizes ranging from tickets to meeting the movie’s cast to winning a XC60.

Fans have to answer a series of questions with clues scattered across social media sites like Twitter and Facebook. The fans are encouraged to chat with others to solve the puzzles, thereby creating communities around the competition.

Volvo get brand placement and social media: a good step towards the elusive street credibility and sexiness they desire.